This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The real advantage which truth has consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favorable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such a head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.
Circumstances | Opinion | Time | Truth | Will |
There are many shining qualities on the mind of man; but none so useful as discretion. It is this which gives a value to all the rest, and sets them at work in their proper places, and turns them to the advantage of their possessor. Without it, learning is pedantry; wit, impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness; and the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice. Though a man has all other perfections and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his station of life.
Discretion | Impertinence | Learning | Life | Life | Looks | Man | Mind | Pedantry | Perfection | Prejudice | Qualities | Rest | Virtue | Virtue | Wants | Weakness | Will | Wit | Work | World | Talent | Value |
Silence never shows itself to so great an advantage as when it is made the reply to calumny and defamation, provided that we give no just occasion for them.
Laurence J. Peter, fully Laurence Johnston Peter
Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.
Art | Originality | Art |
Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
There can be no peace of mind in love, since the advantage one has secured is never anything but a fresh starting-point for further desires.
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
We cannot employ the mind to advantage when we are filled with excessive food and drink.
Mind |
The history of man is a series of conspiracies to win from nature some advantage without paying for it.
There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. 'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 'Tis better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion. We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.
Behavior | Better | Courage | Good | Joy | Light | Man | Meaning | Pain | Thought |
Suzanne LaFollette, fully Suzanne Clara La Follette
Real freedom is not a matter of the shifting of advantage from one sex to the other or from one class to another. Real freedom means the disappearance of advantage, and primarily or economic advantage.
Confidence gives a fool the advantage over a wise man.
Confidence | Man | Wise |
To be a member of a crowd is an experience closely akin to alcoholic intoxication. Most human beings feel a craving to escape from the cramping limitations of their ego, to take periodical holidays from their all too familiar, all to squalid little selves. As they do not know how to travel upwards from personality into a region of super-personality and as they are unwilling, even if they do know, to fulfill the ethical, psychological and physiological conditions of self-transcendence, they turn naturally to the descending road, the road that leads down from personality to the darkness of subhuman emotionalism and panic animality.
Darkness | Ego | Experience | Little | Panic | Personality | Self |
Illness is the result of imbalance. Imbalance is a result of forgetting who you are. Forgetting who you are creates thoughts and actions that lead to an unhealthy lifestyle and eventually illness... Illness can thus be understood as a lesson you have given yourself to help you remember who you are.
Lesson |
C. Wright Mills, fully Charles Wright Mills
The [advertiser’s] formula is: to make people ashamed of last year’s model; to hook up self-esteem itself with the purchasing of this year’s; to create a panic for status, and hence a panic of self-evaluation, and to connect its relief with the consumption of specified commodities.
Let nothing pass which will advantage you; Hairy in front, Occasion's bald behind.
F. L. Lucas, fully Frank Laurence "F. L." Lucas
The only hope I can see for the future depends on a wiser and braver use of the reason, not a panic flight from it.